What is a “Good” Co-Marketing Plan Between Partners and Vendors?
A product can be the best of its class, but unless it’s marketed well none of it matters. This is why vendors and partners often work together on a co-marketing plan. But what kind of agreement should partners aspire to when defining said plan with their vendors, and how do you know if it’s worth investing in?
In this episode of P2PNow, we go over everything from how to execute co-marketing activities to what the funding split should look like. Watch the session below or read on for a full transcript!
Transcript
Sam: Today’s episode is centered on setting up a good Co-Marketing Plan with your vendor. Christian, we’ve had episodes about improving content marketing and aligning marketing strategies. What do we mean when we say “set up a Co-Marketing Plan?”
Christian: A good place to start is to define a Co-Marketing Plan. This is when the vendor and the partner will be working together to execute marketing activities. Both parties are putting up funds. Both parties are engaged in execution. This is different than the Independent Marketing a partner may do to promote any services.
Sam: It’s important to also mention that for those independent activities vendors may have programs to cover those costs with Marketing Development Fund (MDF) Programs. For the Co-Marketing Activities, what’s the best way for a partner to put together a plan?
Christian:
- Identify a unique story you and the vendor can tell. This often comes for some specialization you as the partner brings that the vendor enhances.
- Identify a series of events or webinars you can take this story to.
- Confirm your presentation and speakers and execute.
Sam: One of the benefits of taking this approach is that you can take the same story to multiple events. Reducing the time you’ll be spending coming up with a unique message for each event.
Christian: As an example AvePoint offers a records management solution. We have partners that specialize in addressing a specific government compliance for records management.
AvePoint dramatically increases the speed in which the partner can deploy that solution. Just this year this messaging has turned into three live events and two webinars.
Sam: Not to mention, that the brand recognition you can leverage by attending events with a larger vendor can be massive. Once additional note – Co-Marketing is often something you as the partner have to bring up and push to execute.
More often than not, vendors have limited marketing staff. Co-marketing plans can be time consuming to set up. However, once you have the story straight and events identified it can yield amazing benefits to both parities.
Christian: That’s right. To learn more about AvePoint’s Co-Marketing opportunities, be sure to ask your AvePoint Rep. And to find out more about AvePoint’s Partner Program, visit avepoint.com/partners.
An Office Apps & Services MVP and Microsoft Regional Director, Christian Buckley is an internationally recognized author and speaker and runs the community-focused CollabTalk blog, podcast, and tweetjam series.
View all posts by Christian Buckley
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